An S&M worker's back pages do de Sade proud as a frank account of bad behavior

Midway into Melissa Febos' shrewdly penetrating memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin's), in which she recounts the four years she worked as a professional dominatrix, the author, now a writing instructor and a university lecturer in liberal studies, writes: "I was good at my job. I greeted this discovery with genuine surprise, still believing that it was more chance than personality that had landed me in the dungeon. I lived in New York, had an open mind, and needed money, but I didn't want to strip or prostitute myself. It seemed obvious. I was surprised that I didn't know more women who had tried it."

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A lover of secrets since her childhood on Cape Cod, Febos found that the high-end, underground S&M lifestyle suited her in every way. It solved her money worries, imbued her with a thrilling sense of personal confidence, and gave her leeway to complete her BA in writing.

At the same time, dungeon life dragged her down into a nasty heroin habit, revealed her own "bottomless" neediness, exposed her to some clients who were more creepy than kinky, and sent her searching for therapy to unravel what had become the biggest secret of all: herself.

Febos' journeying into the darkest corners of both her and others' minds is entertaining and enlightening; there are weird, eye-popping, sad, hilarious, and all-too-human episodes and encounters on virtually every page. Her sessions with clients seem, ultimately, as clinical as they are corporeal, as psychological as they are sexual. For someone for whom the hidden world had always been an aphrodisiac, Febos bares the most intimate aspects of her role-playing services for such clients as Toilet Timmy and Rick, the spank-or-bespanked SAT tutor.

Febos writes of her own walk on the wild side—what it gave her, what it took from her, what it taught her—like a seasoned, and chastened, pro.